welcome to Argentina

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Be warned, myself and Niamh have been without internet for several days due to the fact that we have been staying in the Argentinean backwoods towns, it’s a bit like that film deliverance except with friendlier locals with a full set of teeth,. no duelling banjos and thankfully no anal rape.

Anyway, this blog entry is longer then normal so just bear with it, we have promised to stay in more advanced towns in future to keep things more tight and coherent.

Argentina, with the rainforest at its crown and Patagonia nearly resting its feet on the Antarctic circle, home of Che Guevara, Philippe Conteponi, legendary steaks, giganotosaurus and the future birthplace of Johnny Rico*, its going to be some place to visit.

Niamh managed to survive her well kept dorm and I managed to survive another night in the lair of the sloth so we decided to make tracks for the Argentinian border. Our helpful bus driver dumped us on a dirty empty stretch of road and then pointed “Frontiera Argentina” at some very ugly concrete buildings that seemed very far away in the midday 30 something degree heat before disappearing in a cloud of dust into the hills.

With nothing else to do and no alternative transport in sight we had no choice but to throw on our rucksacks and plod our way over the border. I set off, backpack doing its best to help me develop acute curvature of the spinal column, accompanied not by my beautiful girlfriend but by what appeared to be a free standing blue backpack set atop a pair of pink shorts and matching sandals.

Clearing customs was far from daunting with my own passport stamped using yesterdays date and Niamh asked a series of intimidating questions from the Argentinean border police that commenced with “what is Irelands national drink” and culminated with “Do you really wet a baby’s head when it is born?”

As we had a sizable chunk of Brazilian Real left we decided to forgo staying in the Fou Iguassu, the town located on the Argentinean border, and use our remaining Brazilian currency to get a bus as far into Argentina as possible. We ended up choosing what the guidebook described as a “sleepy little town close to one of northern Argentina’s most famous tourist attractions, San Ignacio.

We heard that the being a passenger on an Argentinean bus was just like flying virgin transatlantic except with better cola, the grapevine certainly wasn’t wrong. We were on a local 5 hour service and the bus even had a stewardess going up and down the isle ensuring all passengers, who no doubt at great risk of developing haemorrhoids from sitting in one seat for so long also had every chance possible of contracting diabetes to go along with it, with fizzy drinks and boiled sweets being force fed to passengers every step of the way. If that’s not service I don’t know what is.

To call San Ignacio sleepy would be like calling the Sunni triangle in Iraq a tad dangerous, the place is positively hibernating, the main road that spines up the centre of the town is paved and lined with the occasional ant hill . The other roads in the town are surfaced with broken shale or simply consist of churned flattened red earth. Most of the back dirt roads are scattered with discarded farming equipment and related vehicles, the colour of these discarded rusted husks gives the impression they are melting into the red soil.
The locals drive high axel flatbed trucks that rubble past with the gypsy kings blaring out from the windows, the trucks having to swerve occasionally to avoid the huge amount of wandering dogs and chickens of which there seems to be more of on the street then people. The wandering dogs are not in fact strays but pets with each family in San Ignacio seemingly owning at least 3. One particular dog that roams just outside our bungalow is a disconcertingly large Rhodesian ridgeback, a working breed originally bread to hunt large African game. In Ireland such a breed isn’t allowed out without a muzzle or a lead but this one is content to pad up and down road, he seems harmless enough and content to mind his own business and pad up and down the road sniffing the bottoms of passing poultry rather then eat any tourists.

For the price of a burger and fries in empty pockets you can hire a bungalow in San Ignacio for a day. It even comes complete with wi fi, although we have only managed to stay connected for about ten minutes in total over the past few days, hence the reason for the wall of times new roman you are wading through today. The bungalow comes complete with something we have lacked since we crossed the equator, a private bathroom. The red muck that constitutes a road surface in San Ignacio makes your skin pigmentation from your shins down resemble that of that of Katie Price and it’s a joy having a power shower to reverse the resemblance.

The principal attraction of San Ignacio is “The Mission”, a Jesuit institution set up to convert the native Guarani people to Christianity. Unlike the other westerners who tried to win the “savages” over with such novel tactics such as rape, wholesale murder and the spreading of smallpox the Jesuits actually tried a novel approach of treating the indigenous tribes as decent human beings. Guarani tribal elders held equal sway with the Jesuit priests and monks in the missions and both Christian and Guranai learned much from each other. Visiting the ruins of the mission itself was interesting and while admittedly we didn’t leave bursting with adrenaline we certainly had our horizons broadened.

Once our educational visit was over we strolled back to the bungalow, being especially careful to avoid any high velocity tumbleweeds that lunged at us from the completely empty streets. The streets were so devoid of people it was admittedly quite eerie. My imagination being how it is scenarios of the entire population being abducted by Martians( Hello! The soil is red!) or being wiped out and turned into zombies by rage infested howler monkeys did cross my mind although Niamhs suggestion that they were probably just taking a siesta was probably closer to the mark.

By far the most exciting thing to happen in San Ignacio was when I emerged from the shower, to find Niamh sitting on the bed doing an oscar worthy impersonation of an angry hamster( google it- seriously open another tab and have a look) while pointing frantically at an ominous shadow near the cupboard.

Apparently there was a massive spider lurking somewhere within the aforementioned shadow and I was to be tasked with removing or destroying the interloper in question.

With this realization my breathing quickened, I imagined phantom itches all over my skin and my bladder prepared itself to become as porous as a teabag.

Worst case scenario it would be a spider of the bird eating family, better known to most people as a tarantula, I spotted some of their characteristic burrows on the grass outside our very bungalow. If it was such a spider then my poor girlfriend would be on her own and more concerned with pouring cold water over my face to revive me from the inevitable fainting and preceding to find me a clean pair of shorts.

The spider in question wasn’t a bird eater but was certainly a monster, each leg being covered in thin hairs, the legs themselves as thick as a piece of spaghetti. I set out googleing the spider but unfortunately the internet was having problems. What I did remember was that it was the smaller spiders that were dangerous from a venom point of view. The large hairy bird eating behemoths are in actuality just scary to look at and are not venomous.

�While the internet was not available to identify the creepy crawly in question I had a damsel in distress. This particular damsel is a girl that normally loves and dotes on all animals uttered the very uncharacteristic order for me to heed…

ANDREWWWW JUST KILL IT IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!

I did just that but boy did it lead me on a merry chase, with the crafty arachnid surviving a full force whack from a copy of rugby world and deftly sidestepping a thrown copy of FHM. Eventually I managed to corner it and subsequently pulverise it with lonely Planets guide to Cambodia and after Naimh insisting on viewing the carcass for confirmation of its demise I discarded the husk out the back window.

We left San Ignacio yesterday morning for Corrientes, our eventual destination being a town called Mercedes. Mercedes is where wildlife tours are organised to see the wetlands of Esteras Del Iberia.

Esteras Del Iberia being home to all the manner of girlfriend friendly wildlife such as Caymans( small cousins of crocs), Anacondas and the Capybara, a rodent as large as a golden retriever.

Footnotes

*As we get closer to the capital, Buenos airas expect more and more references to Paul Verhovens film starship troopers. Apologies to those who are not familiar to this film as many of these might go over your head.

**the unfortunate spider will be identified in the next blog post as soon as I can properly consult the internet.

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